


as you choke on all the words you long to exhale within your next breath

by orphan_account



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Diego Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Gen, also because i don't like luther, but it's escalated due to jealousy, diego and luther don't get along, he's also got his own problems tho, implied panic attack, in which diego discovers his secondary power, luther hate, mostly based on diego's innate jealousy towards him, references to abuse/neglect, some of his dislike for luther is based on valid reasons, suffocation, which is his actual power in the comics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-11-14 18:07:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18057434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: “Twenty-two minutes?” Reginald Hargreeves barks incredulously. “Impossible. By all means, he should be dead.”And by all means, Diego should. Stuck at the bottom of a pool with a slab of concrete on his chest, pinning him to the gritty bottom—he should have kicked it within the first few minutes. But he hadn’t.





	as you choke on all the words you long to exhale within your next breath

“Twenty-two minutes?” Reginald Hargreeves barks incredulously. “Impossible. By all means, he should be dead.”

And by all means, Diego should. Stuck at the bottom of a pool with a slab of concrete on his chest, pinning him to the gritty bottom—he should have kicked it within the first few minutes. But he hadn’t.

Instead he’d laid there for five minutes, ten minutes, twenty, twenty-two—until Luther’s frantic face had finally appeared above his, blond hair floating around his head and cheeks puffed out like a fish as he’d heaved the concrete off Diego’s chest and hauled him back to the surface. Luther had emerged gasping. Diego had simply let out the breath of air he’d been holding and gone on breathing normally.

His siblings had all stared at him in horror. Klaus had been the first to break the silence.

“He’s not dead, is he? That’s not his _ghost_ I’m seeing, right?”

“Still alive, asshole,” Diego had replied, though he himself wasn’t quite sure how.

No one had _expected_ the hotel to explode. Diego hadn’t expected the resounding blast to throw him headlong into the ten-foot-deep pool, and he really hadn’t anticipated the large chunk of concrete that splashed down after him, settling on his chest before he’d had time to swim out of the way.

He’d struggled desperately for the first few minutes, choking on water out of reflex and shoving at the heavy weight, but it hadn’t budged. Finally, he’d given up as it gradually squeezed out the little remaining air in his lungs, and waited to drown.

He hadn’t drowned. The need to breathe was somehow nonexistent, and while the concrete slowly crushing his ribs wasn’t exactly comfortable, he’d managed to survive until Luther, the asshole, came to _rescue_ him. The word leaves a sour taste in Diego’s mouth.

“Maybe he just has really high lung capacity,” Five says distractedly, nursing a scrape on his arm.

“Or maybe,” Luther says, side-eying their father. “It’s a secondary power.”

Reginald stares at Diego with narrowed eyes for a moment. “Perhaps.”

Luther grins proudly at their father’s approval and Diego subtly flips him the bird. Damn suck-up.

“Hm. We will have to test this,” Reginald says busily, dusting his hands on his spotless trousers. “Come. Leave the clean-up to the city workers, and well done on apprehending the criminals.”

“Wait,” Diego says indignantly, because what? He hadn’t even gotten to do a single thing. “When did you guys catch them?”

“While you were drowning,” Allison tells him, patting his shoulder. “Sorry. We didn’t notice you were missing until Ben spotted you at the bottom.”

He shrugs her hand off, disgruntled. First he’d missed out on the action, and then _Luther_ had had to drag his sorry ass out of the water. Sometimes Diego really can’t stand his goody-two-shoes brother. He’d probably lick the bottom of Dad’s scummy shoes to make him happy.

“Sorry.” Vanya’s quiet, apologetic voice startles him as she appears suddenly at his side. “She doesn’t mean to sound so insensitive.”

Diego grunts. “Not like I give a shit.”

He just wants to go home at this point and change out of his sopping wet uniform, and then sulk in his bedroom while throwing darts at Luther’s picture for a good hour. That always makes him feel better.

That’s not what happens, though. The moment they arrive back home, his siblings disperse to their own rooms while Reginald grips one of his soggy shoulders and steers him towards the basement.

“Can’t I change, first?” Diego complains, which earns him a light cuff on the back of his head.

“You should be able to take a little discomfort, Number Two,” Reginald says disapprovingly and beckons Mom to follow them down the stairs. She immediately starts after them, high heels clicking on the stone steps, and gives Diego a reassuring smile as they descend further. He makes sure to return it, even if it’s half-hearted. Mom always likes it better when he smiles.

“I would assume,” Reginald mutters, mostly to himself. “That this is a sort of secondary power. Breath control, perhaps. There must be a limit, however. There is always a limit.”

“What are you saying?” Diego frowns. “That my secondary power is holding my breath? That sounds stupid.”

“Wrong,” Reginald says sharply, scribbling something down in a leather-bound notebook. “There are many applications, Number Two. Now then—”

He ushers Diego towards a concrete chamber sealed with a heavy, metal door. Diego eyes it wearily. It looks more like a cage than a room. “You want me to go inside?”

Reginald opens the door with a loud metallic screech. “In.”

Diego isn’t feeling too keen on it. He doesn’t feel too keen on most things his father expects him to do, but—what is he supposed to do? _Disobey_ him? The idea itself is ludicrous. He’s not stupid. He’s just not a kiss-up like Luther.

“You’ll be fine, Diego dear,” Mom says brightly. “I know you will.”

That calms him, if only slightly. Diego takes a deep breath and steps inside the chamber. His father nods briskly and cranks the door shut behind him. Standing there in his soaking wet suit, Diego shivers.

He isn’t too sure exactly what his father expects him to do in there, since he hadn’t given him any specific orders. Diego watches apprehensively through the small glass window in the door as Reginald fiddles with a control panel before flipping a few switches. Mom stands there tentatively. She tilts her head encouragingly when he meets her gaze.

A dry, sucking sound suddenly fills the chamber. Diego glances around in alarm, though he does his best to keep his posture relaxed. Reginald doesn’t like when he fidgets. It makes him look unprofessional and childish.

It’s the air vents in the chamber, he realizes, that are making the sound. He frowns, confused. An intercom crackles to life from somewhere in one of the corners, and then Reginald’s barking voice is filtering through.

“When it becomes too much for you, signal me,” he says shortly. “Draw a line across your throat.”

Diego nods, still bewildered as the intercom cuts off, and then abruptly realizes that it’s growing more difficult to breathe. The air vents—they’re not circulating the air.

_They’re draining it out of the room._

Irrational panic grips him. He _won’t_ outwardly show it. He won’t. His father is just testing him. They’ve all been tested before. This is just to help figure out Diego’s limit.

 _Breathe,_ he thinks stupidly for a split second, and then remembers the whole point of this exercise. Diego shakily sucks in one more breath of air from the de-oxygenating room, finds Mom’s eyes through the glass, and holds it in.

Abruptly, all sound cuts off. It’s like he’s gone deaf. Diego glances around, trying to keep his cool. He doesn’t _feel_ like he’s suffocating, but the knowledge that all the air in the room is gone is terrifying. He’s in a literal vacuum.

He thinks back desperately to Pogo’s physics lessons. What had he said? Five had answered the question as assuredly as usual: sound can’t travel through space, because there is no air in space. Sound is simply vibrations in the air. He claps his hands experimentally. Nothing.

Diego can’t help but wonder what will happen if he exhales the breath he’s holding in his lungs.

 _You’re doing great,_ Mom mouths through the window. He can’t hear her say it.

God, he hates this—he _hates_ it. He wants to breathe on reflex so badly. But that would be giving into temptation, into weakness. _Number One would be more resilient than this,_ Reginald’s voice echoes in his mind. Diego can practically _hear_ the asshole’s insufferable tone. Scowling, he grits his teeth and fixes his eyes on his father as he approaches the window and sets a clock down in front of it.

 _Keep track of the time,_ he says out loud, or at least Diego thinks he does. Either way, he nods.

The twenty-minute mark slowly ticks by. There’s no strain on his lungs whatsoever. Diego fidgets with his uniform. Oddly enough, it’s drying quickly. He wonders if it has something to do with the lack of air.

They hit the hour mark, and Diego is still holding his breath without a problem. The issue is the lack of sound—it’s starting to get to him. He can’t hear any of his own movements. He can’t even hear his heartbeat when he presses his palms to his ears.

Reginald taps his pen on his notebook a few times, frowning. He lifts a finger to his throat in a question. Diego shakes his head and Reginald goes back to scribbling.

It’s at the three-hour mark that his stomach starts to growl—or vibrate, in Diego’s case, since he can’t hear it. Diego contemplates drawing a line across his throat just for the hell of it, because he’s hungry and he’s pretty sure he won’t ever be trapped somewhere where he needs to hold his breath for more than three hours. But then his father would ask why he’d done it, and that answer wouldn’t be satisfactory at all.

 _Number One would not be such a disappointment,_ his father would say—Number One, Number _One._ Diego’s _sick_ of that asshole.

He sort of drifts in and out for the next few hours. Mom leans towards Reginald somewhere around the six-hour mark and asks if she can bring Diego dinner. Reginald waves her off, frowning, and Mom’s smile twitches. Diego resists the urge to pound at the glass door.

He doesn’t really like to admit his weaknesses, but being stuck in here is starting to get to him. He wants his knives. He wants to be able to talk. He wants to go to _sleep._

More than anything though, he’s afraid of what will happen if he exhales. What if his power is based upon him having air in his lungs to begin with? What if he lets it out and then chokes to death before Reginald can open the door?

Before Diego even realizes what he’s doing, a trembling finger reaches his throat. Reginald catches sight of him and gives his head a brief shake. He knows. Of _course_ he knows.

At the twelve hour mark, Klaus and Luther creep into the basement looking for Mom. Reginald waves her off distractedly, but his brothers don’t immediately leave. Klaus casts him a worried look through the glass, and Diego shrugs half-heartedly. Mom lays a hand on Klaus’ shoulder and leads him back up the stairs. Luther hangs back a moment with their father and Diego feels his irritation spike.

 _Has he been holding his breath this whole time?_ Luther asks silently, an interested look on his face, and it reminds Diego so much of their father that he wants nothing more than to punch Luther in his smug, blond face.

Reginald nods curtly. _Well done on picking up on his ability,_ he says without a hint of pride on his face, but Luther still beams like his father just gifted him the world. Diego’s anger flares.

 _Fuck you, Luther,_ he wants to spit, but all that escapes him is a wheeze. His eyes go wide—he just let out his final breath of air. Shit— _fuck._

Diego pitches forward onto his hands and knees, eyes watering. He can’t breathe—he can’t—he can’t _breathe—!_

His fingers scrabble across the smooth, hard floor as Luther shouts in alarm from outside and moves to open the door. Reginald stops him, an intrigued eyebrow raised. Diego frantically draws a line across his throat over and over again, but he still doesn’t open the door.

 _Open it,_ he tries to gasp, _please—_

A minute passes.

Then five. Then ten. Nothing. He isn’t suffocating. He isn’t dying. He just...isn’t breathing.

After twenty minutes have passed, Reginald finally sets down his notebook and unlocks the door. It opens with a grating screech and air rushes into the room. Diego sucks in a breath, cheeks wet.

Luther stands outside the chamber, false worry written across his face, and Diego ducks his head. It’s _humiliating._

“An impressive display, no matter how pathetic at the end,” Reginald says brusquely. “Pull yourself together, Number Two.”

Diego slowly climbs to his feet, gritting his teeth as he wipes away his tear tracks. He steps out of the chamber, shouldering his way past Luther as he tries to grab his arm. “Don’t touch me, dipshit.”

“Enough!” Reginald barks. “I won’t tolerate insolence. To bed, both of you. We will conduct repeat trials, Number Two. For now, it can be assumed that there is no active limit to your breath control.”

He nods once to show he’s listening before trudging up the stairs, Luther in tow. Reginald’s pen-scratching resumes immediately.

“That’s a cool power,” Luther tries. Mockingly. Diego refuses to look at him, if all the asshole can do is make fun of him.

“I wonder if any of the others have secondary powers,” Luther says. Diego turns left down the hall to his room. Irritatingly, Luther follows him. “Maybe they’re oddly specific, like yours—”

Diego rounds on him, temper flaring. “Maybe they’re just as useless too, huh Luther? Are you happy now? Don’t have to worry about anyone stealing your spotlight yet?”

Luther freezes, a gormless look on his stupid face. “I don’t—Dad doesn’t—Dad loves all of us the same.”

Diego shoves him away with a disbelieving laugh. “Shut the hell _up,_ Luther. Dad doesn’t love _any_ of us. But sure, you can be his favorite science experiment if you want.”

Luther’s face hardens. “None of us are science experiments.”

Yeah, okay. Diego’s put up with way too much shit today to deal with this. The last thing he needs now is to put up with Luther’s delusions. “Good night, Luther.”

“No,” Luther says. He sounds upset. “You can’t just _say_ that kind of stuff, Diego.”

Diego elbows past him and into his room. “Good _night,_ Number One.”

He shuts the door in Luther’s face.

**Author's Note:**

> so! you can probably guess how i feel about luther lmao. but diego's dislike is also rooted in jealousy as well as logic, since i'm basing this off of gerard way's excerpt where he talks about reginald purposely pitting numbers one and two against each other. that said, luther does give dear old dad too much credit and diego is all too happy to call him out on that.
> 
> i also wanted to write about diego's comic book power, since it seems really interesting. i haven't read the comics but i'm hoping the netflix series finds a way to integrate this, or at least explores/builds on his abilities a little more. if you wanna hmu on [tumblr](https://wellthengetouttathesoupaisle.tumblr.com/) to chat, i love to scream about the umbrella academy, bnha, and one (1) diego hargreeves :))


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